select.surnames2.website

Wells

Select
Wells Surname Genealogy

Wells
derives from the
Anglo-Saxon word waella
which described a spring
(rather than a well) and probably a spring associated with a holy
place. The surname Wells might describe either someone who llived
by a spring or someone from a place called Wells.

The two main place names for Wells in England have been:

the cathedral
city of
Wells in Somerset

and the village of Wells-next-the-Sea in north
Norfolk.

They both appeared in the Domesday Book, as Weile and Guella respectively.

The surname
Welles is thought to have originated from the Lincolnshire village of
Well,
also to be found in the Domesday Book. Welles has persisted as a
surname, although it has usually contracted to Wells.

England.
Wells place names provided the earliest instances of Wells's use as a
surname:

Edward de Wells was a 12th century landowner in the city of
Wells, Somerset. His sons Hugh and Jocelin both became bishops,
Hugh of Lincoln and Jocelin of Bath and Wells.

Adam de Welles of Lincolnshire was made the 1st Baron de Welles
in the 13th century. Later Barons fought and died in the Wars of
the Roses (including Sir Robert Welles who was executed for rebellion
in 1469). Anne Welles of this family was the great great great
grandmother of Anne Boleyn.

Wells in Somerset and Welles in Lincolnshire might suggest that there
was both a western and an eastern focus for the Wells surname.
However, the subsequent distribution of the Wells name
shows that Wells has not been that common in the west of England.
It was found from early times in East Anglia, London and Kent.

Kent John Wells
was a naval storekeeper (and a budding mathematician) in
Deptford in the early 17th century; and there are Kent family histories
from the early 18th century out of Margate, Tonbridge, Woodchurch, and
Penshurst (the last-named being the
starting
point for the family of the writer H.G. Wells).

Yorkshire There
was also an early Wells outpost in north Yorkshire, in and around
Ripon. Robert Welles held land at Galphay in the parish of Kirkby
Malzeard in the 1550's. The family farm, Cow Myers, stayed with
the Wells until the 19th century. William Wells grew up in Thirsk
in the 1750's.

"A mason, he built the Methodist Chapel
at Thirsk and knew John Wesley, who hand knelt in prayer with William
and his wife Margaret and commended them both to the Divine protection
when they left Yorkshire."

They travelled to Boston and eventually settled in Halifax, Nova
Scotia.
Scotland.
The Wells name is to be found in Dumfries, but pronounced as
"Walls." James and Mary Wells of Dumfries who boarded the boat
for Australia in 1852 were in fact listed as Walls.

Ireland. Irish Wells
seemed to be concentrated in Ulster and were
probably of English or Scottish descent. Samuel Wells was on the
Antrim flaxgrowers' list of 1796. There were Wells in and around
Lurgan in county Armagh during the 19th century.America. here were
early Wells/Welles arrivals into New England and into Virginia and
Maryland.

New England
Thomas Welles from Stourton in Warwickshire, came to
Hartford, Connecticut in 1636 and
later settled in Wethersfield. He was for a short time the
colonial governor of the Connecticut colony. His descendants were
numerous and
included:

Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War

Roger Welles, San Diego's first "navy mayor" during World War One

Henry Wells who founded both the American Express Company and the
bank
Wells Fargo

and Daniel Wells the Mormon, an early mayor of Salt Lake
City.

There are also believed to be connections to Gerald Ford,
Nancy Reagan,
and Sarah Palin. The
Descendants of Thomas Welles
by Donna H. Semiatkoski was published in 1990.

Other early Wells arrivals were:

Thomas Wells, who had arrived with his parents in 1635 and later
settled in Hadley, Massachusetts. One branch of this family moved to
Vermont and included in their number the Civil War General William
Wells. Another went south to Louisiana in the late 1700's and
held sway there until the Civil War.

William
Wells of Northold, who came to New England in the
1630's. Tradition has him as one of the founders of Northold on
Long Island in 1640. It was the first English settlement in what
was then Dutch New Amsterdam. This Wells' lineage has been the
subject of two books, William Wells
of Southold and His Descendants by the Rev. Charles
Wells Hayes in 1878 and William
Wells of Southold by Walter M. Wells a century later in
1986.

Virginia and Maryland
Stephen Wells came to Richmond county, Virginia in
1662. His descendants headed south in 1819 to
Louisiana. William Wells and his family were among the first
settlers of the Ponchatoula area of Louisiana.

From these early immigrants came two Wells politicial dynasties of the
19th century, one in Louisiana and the other in Utah.

Louisiana
Levi
Wells had secured land from the Spanish in the
1790's in Rapides parish and started the family's cotton
plantations. His sons James Madison and Jefferson Wells were planters
there and active in the local politics in the years up to the Civil War
(James was briefly Governor of the state in 1864).

Utah
Daniel
Wells had emigrated to Salt Lake Valley with the Mormon pioneers
in 1848. His family became politically prominent in Utah's early
years, intermarrying with other prominent local families such as the
Cannons, the Grants, and the Bennetts.

Canada. One of the first
Wells in Canada was possibly William Wells from Thirsk in Yorkshire who
arrived in New Brunswick in 1773 and settled with his family in Point
de Bute. Another Wells family, this time from Ireland, came to
Guysboro, Nova Scotia around 1802. Later Wells here were sea
captains.

There were Wells among the Loyalists who migrated north to Canada after
the Revolutionary War. One such was William Wells from New
Hampshire. He crossed the border as a young lad in 1787 and
settled in the Maitland area along the St. Lawrence river. His
son W.B. Wells became actively involved in the Reform politics of the
1830's.

Australia. Henry and
Hannah Wells, newly married in Wiltshire, departed for Melbourne on the
Adromache in 1839. They
settled first in Sorrento and later in Frankston, Victoria and raised
thirteen children, twelve of them boys.

Select
Wells Miscellany

If you would like to read more, click on the miscellany page for
further stories and accounts:

Adam de Welles distinguished
himself in warfare and was made Baron de Welles by Edward
I in 1299.Henry Wells was the 19th century
American businessman instrumental in the founding of both the American
Express Company and Wells Fargo.Ida Wells, born a slave in
Mississippi, was an early crusader for civil rights in America.Sister Jane Wells
was a Victorian nursing heroine revered almost as much as Florence
Nightingale in her time.H.G.
Wells was the English
writer best known for his science fiction works like War of The Worlds.Orson Welles was the American
film director, writer and actor, who first scared audiences in 1938
with his radio renditon of H.G. Wells' War of The Worlds. Select Wellses
Today

50,000 in the UK (most numerous
in Sussex)

61,000 in America (most numerous
in New York)

34,000 elsewhere (most numerous in Canada).

PS. You might want
to check out the surnames page on this
website. It covers surname genealogy in this and companion
websites for more than 800 surnames.